Saturday, May 31, 2014

The entry I wrote for the Legacy.com Guest book, that the guest book admin refuses to publish there.Whoever it is could drop me an email, tell me what I'm doing wrong, if anything. It just feels like a slammed door on this end and having not been told about Vanya's death for 4 months, it feels like additional ill will.I'm hurt and frustrated that the Guest book admin, who I assume is Elizabeth, refuses to publish my entry. As the days have passed and the shock of learning about Vanya's death has worn off, I realize my thoughts are too raw, too personal, not the typical Hallmark version of what people write there. I guess I have to edit the raw bits and try again.------------The raw version:Vanya, my dear friend, I only just heard about your death weeks ago. I'm deeply sad you've gone. I miss you and love you and will remember you with great tenderness the rest of my life. I made a blog about you here with pictures and memories. I know you weren't sentimental but I am and I want a place to put my thoughts about you. http://vanyafranck.blogspot.com/

Where are you, I need to come downstairs, walk up the steps to your apartment door in the adjacent building, sit in your apartment over tea and complain to you about this! I miss you terribly Vanya. It was so terrible when you knew Alzheimer's had taken hold of your brain. How you fought it until you were 80 and it took control! What strength of spirit you had! I hated grieving for you then, seeing you slowly drift away my dear friend of 25 years.

I want to come visit you now, we could talk to two in the morning about everything, as usual, wandering from topic to topic, about your red setter or you showing me how Becky finds her biscuits in the cushions or places you hide them, your could show me your latest furniture find in NYC garbage that you've transformed into a work of art, like that great flattened birdcage on your wall.

We could talk about interviews on Charlie Rose, talks by Joseph Campbell, about myths, about your writing, about your mother or my mother, about our neighbors, about family dysfunction, about regrets, about Angel, who I loathed even though I never met him and you were furious at me for loathing, about that Stephen Hawkins documentary on the origins of the universe that changed your life and made you feel God for the first time in many years, not in a religious way or Christian way but in a cosmic resonance way. Or you could brag about your latest find at the Salvation army, a leather jacket you transformed by restitching it and dyeing in your claw foot bathtub in the kitchen.

We could eat some of your marvelous food. I could tell you that you could write a great book of recipes, the cool ideas you always cooked up in all sorts of ways, which you never thought were a big deal but I thought were amazing. You're deeply a part of my life dearest Vanya and you always will be. I do hope that you are enjoying a marvelous cosmic resonance now.